Frustrations with hair colour

I'm feeling very frustrated at the moment.  I recently received some really good quality Brazilian remy hair that I buy in colour #16, a golden blonde, then dye down to a dark ash blonde/light ash brown.

My reason for doing this is twofold.  First, the stock colours that the hair comes in tend to have a lot of red in them.  Generally, I get better ash tones if I dye the hair myself.  Second, the factories use fabric dye to colour the hair, which is almost impossible to lighten.  When it comes time to bleach my knots, the colour lifts much more easily from hair that I have dyed with proper hair dye.

In a perfect world, I would be able to choose the dye for the colour that I'm after, and use it on any hair to achieve a perfect result.  However, life is never that simple.

Here are a couple of tests I made using the same hair colour on two different kinds of hair.  The sample on the left is average quality wefted Brazilian hair I already had.  It took the colour exactly as I was hoping it would, giving a nice natural ash brown/blonde.  The sample on the right is the new hair.  It is much softer and finer, and will be beautiful to work with.  However, the colour reacts very differently to this hair, and I end up with an ugly purple-grey.

If I knew more about colouring I could work with toners to get rid of the purple, but I just want a simple one-step process that will give me the results I'm looking for.  I'm going to have to try another brand of dye and hope for the best.

If anyone reading this has any suggestions about what I might be doing wrong, please don't hesitate to comment.  Advice is always appreciated! :)

New ash blonde synthetic wig

I recently ordered some synthetic hair extensions on eBay, and was amazed at the quality of the hair.  It looks and feels just like real hair to me!

I was not overly happy with the blonde 'quick front' wig that I made because the transition between the factory wig and the ventilated lace front was too obvious.  So I wanted to make a full lace wig, and ventilate the whole thing using single strands/single knots.  It is taking a while, but I think it will be a nice piece when it's finished.

Here are a few pics.  The first one shows a small test piece I made, and the others show the wig in progress:

My original idea was to make a short men's style similar to this one by the John Blake company (http://wigsandfacialhair.com) which I love, but I will see how I feel when it's finished.

The piece by John Blake that inspired my project.

I am hesitant to cut away all that great looking hair.  I also think I should have ventilated the hair more carefully at the back for a short style.  It seems to me the hair direction at the nape would be quite important for a style this short.